Updated at 5:15 p.m. Thursday: Revised to include comment from the NRA's lobbying arm.

When the National Rifle Association holds a convention, which it will do in Dallas this week, gun-related injuries temporarily decrease, according to an analysis by the New England Journal of Medicine.

The NRA will host its annual meeting Thursday through Sunday at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center. The association estimates "tens of thousands of patriots" will attend the four-day event in downtown Dallas. Speakers include President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn.

Guns, knives and all other weapons are prohibited before and during Trump's and Pence's appearances.

The study was completed to test the claim that firearm injuries happen mostly among inexperienced users and that safety comes with experience and training. The results suggested that even among experienced gun owners, there are safety concerns and risks.

Dr. Anupam B. Jena of Harvard Medical School and Andrew R. Olenski of Columbia University looked at emergency room visits and hospitalizations for gun injuries during conventions between 2007 and 2015 and compared those numbers to the same days in the three weeks before and after the NRA meetings.

The findings were consistent with fewer gun injuries because fewer people were using guns during that period, as when many gun owners and people who own places where guns are used may be at the convention, the study concluded.

Jena told Reuters he thinks the results won't surprise "the most sophisticated and reasoned gun supporters."

"All we are saying is that guns are inherently unsafe and you recognize that whenever you use a firearm. Even an experienced user may still suffer from a gun-related injury," he said. "That's like saying even the best drivers in the world may still get in a car accident. Why? Because driving is inherently an unsafe activity compared to walking around in circles in your house."

A post on the lobbying group NRA Institute for Legislative Action's website calls the findings of the study into question.

"About 80,000 people attend in a given year. There are about 100 million or so gun owners in the country, so the researchers are claiming that less than one-tenth of one percent of firearm owners are responsible for a 20 percent drop in the firearms-related injury rate nationwide," the post said. "Whatever nonsense they conducted with the data and their methods, this finding flies in the face of common sense and logic. It would be laughable if not so completely absurd."

During NRA events, the largest drops in gun injuries were seen among men, in the South and the West, in states in the highest third of gun-ownership rates and among people living in the state hosting the convention.

The researchers had theorized that the greater reduction in injuries would occur for men, who disproportionately attend the conventions. According to a 2017 NRA survey of meeting attendees, 85 percent were male.

There was no difference in crimes involving a firearm between convention and control dates, the study found.

Dr. Stephen Hargarten, chairman of emergency medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, told Reuters that the results of the study make sense.

"This passes the sniff test," he said. "I have worked with lifetime members of the NRA who secretly confess that they have unintended discharges of their rifles or shotguns. And this study doesn't account for the unintended discharges that didn't result in injury."

In 2015, 489 people died from an accidental firearm discharge and 17,311 were injured, including about 1,500 people 17 and younger, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.